Must Love Horses

by Vicki Tharp

  His nerves settled almost instantly. The ants died. His skin returned to normal size. The alcohol hadn’t had time to hit his bloodstream. Placebo effect? Didn’t matter. The how and why were unimportant.

  He turned as he replaced the flask. Sidney stood two feet away with an expression he couldn’t read—he didn’t know her well enough. Had she seen him take a drink? He thumbed a wintergreen Lifesaver from his front pocket and slipped it into his mouth. He stifled the shudder. Lifesavers after whiskey. He’d almost rather lick a horny toad.

  She held her hand out to him, not saying a word, but watching him the way his mother used to when she was waiting to catch him in a lie. He thumbed another mint from the roll and plopped it into her hand. If he was going to pretend innocence, he was going full monty, as his Brit brothers-in-arms back in Fallujah used to say.

  She plopped the mint into her mouth and he turned back to the truck.

  “Not so fast.” She had her hand held out again, one eyebrow raised.

  If she wanted a sip from his flask, she was out of luck. That thing wasn’t big enough to even last him the day. He reached into his front pocket and plunked the half-eaten roll of candy onto her palm.

  She slipped them into her pocket and cleared her throat. Loudly. “Keys.”

  She wasn’t asking.

  He turned away. The whiskey had made the ants go away, but one swallow wasn’t nearly enough to dull his irritation with her. “I can drive with the prosthetic.”

  “It isn’t the prosthetic I’m worried about.” She reached out, slid her hand into his jacket, pulled out the flask, and tossed it into the bed of the truck.

  “What the hell?”

  “Keys.” Her tone flatlined.

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “Didn’t say you were.”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s say I prefer to drive.” Still the hand. Outstretched. The fingertips wiggling in a give-it-here gesture.

  “One swig—”

  “Keys.” She stepped into his personal space. “Or I’ll—”

  “Or you’ll what?” He fought the grin that wanted to take over his face. Her green eyes flashed somehow cold and hot at the same time. But damn, it was hard to take her seriously when she barely came up to his chest. “You going to tell my mommy on me? Or Mac?”

  “I’m not five years old. I don’t tattle on the other kids on the playground.”

  “Then what’ll you do?”

  She glanced down at his crotch pointedly. “I’ll take the keys myself.”

  He laughed aloud at that. “I’d like to see you tr—”

  As the words left his lips, he knew he was in deep, deep shit. He’d forgotten he had his regular leg on—it fit in the cowboy boot, but didn’t have the spring effect the blade had. The effect that transferred his energy to the ground. The effect that gave him power. The effect that gave him speed.

  The effect that prevented him from having his nuts kicked up into the back of his throat.

  She was quick. Little-fairy-all-hopped-up-on-pixie-dust quick.

  His hand came down to block.

  He closed his eyes and braced for impact.

  The blow never came.

  He peaked out between his eyelids. What had he expected to see? That she’d up and disappeared? Isn’t that what fairies did? But she was in front of him, one leg raised like the karate kid with her pointy toe boot kissing distance from the boys.

  He grunted with relief. Whiskey never tasted good when it came back up. He swallowed. “For such a little thing, you sure are violent.”

  “When I have to be.”

  He unclenched his jaws and a slow smile spread across his face as he reached into his pocket for the keys. “Do you usually pull your punches?”

  “No,” she said. “But I also don’t take advantage of the handicapped.”

  His hand stopped above hers. The tips of his ears heated. He didn’t feel handicapped. He wasn’t handicapped. In fact, he’d worked his ever-loving ass off in physical therapy to regain his mobility. He still worked out hard. Every. Single. Day.

  “Don’t vapor lock on me now.” She snagged the keys from his fingers before he could change his mind. “I didn’t mean the leg, Einstein. I meant the booze.”

  Was that supposed to make him feel better?

  “Get in,” she ordered.

  He did, and for the first time in his life, he felt an odd kinship with Peter Pan. Did Tinker Bell give Peter Pan a rash of shit too?

  She started the engine and headed down the long drive to the main road. The surge of adrenaline had burned up what little alcohol had made it into his system. His skin pricked as if he was developing a heat rash. He fiddled with the climate control knobs, switched the selector to vent, and buzzed his window down to let in the cool air.

  He glanced behind him. The incline of the road had slid the flask to the tailgate. So close…

  “Is that why you drink?”

  “Because I’m Einstein?”

  “Because of your leg.”

  “What do you know about it? About losing a leg. About living with a prosthetic?” He tried to keep from sounding defensive, but by the way she narrowed her eyes at him, he’d failed miserably.

  She nodded. Not in agreement with anything he’d said, but as if she’d internalized something, accepted something. “Not a damn thing. That’s why I’m asking.”

  He didn’t owe her anything. But something in the way she’d asked sounded like she really wanted to know. Really wanted to understand. That she wasn’t asking so she could pass judgment.

  “It dulls,” he said, in a rare moment of honesty, “the pain. Of now, then, what happened…and after.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he continued.

  “I don’t drink because of the amputation or the phantom pains or the nightmares and flashbacks or the loss of my career or the stack of papers from the divorce lawyer. It isn’t any one of those things.”

  She stared through the windshield as if granting him privacy.

  “It’s all of those things,” she said as if she got it, got him.

  He shrugged, even though her eyes were on the gravel road ahead of them.

  “How did it happen?” Her voice was soft, like she was afraid of the answer but wanted to know anyway.

  His chest tightened and the words refused to come. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t talked about it before. The experts always said it got easier the more you talked about it.

  Sometimes they were right.

  Sometimes they were full of shit.

  And sometimes talking was harder than others, like when he was twelve feet from his flask.

  She slowed as they came up to the blacktop road. He needed to change the subject. Needed to get out of his head.

  “About the sheriff,” he said.

  * * * *

  Sidney turned right onto the pavement per Boomer’s instructions. The two-lane road stretched out in front of them—a long, undulating ribbon of asphalt snaking through the mountains. The tension in the cab curled around her, thick and weighty. Did she want to hear about the sheriff? Yeah, but she didn’t think she was up for any more revelations, about Bryan or the sheriff.

  “Can it wait?” she asked.

  “Sure.” He leaned his seat back, stretched his legs out in front of him, and settled his black Stetson low on his head.

  Besides giving directions and his order at the drive-through of a chain burger joint in town, Boomer didn’t say anything the rest of the ride in to Rock Springs. They ate their burgers and fries as they left the town, turned off on Lion Kol Road, and pulled into the facility parking lot fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.

  The silence between them wasn’t exactly awkward, but there was the whole no-talking thing going on. For three hours. So, yeah, she
had to cowgirl up and say something.

  She sipped her cola until her straw gurgled, making her sound like the five-year-old she’d insisted she wasn’t. Fan-freaking-tastic. “Look, I’m sorry if I made you sad or mad or uncomfortable or whatever it was I made you. Don’t tell me about your leg or tell me, up to you. We gotta work together so…” She let her words trail off, hoping he’d jump in there and meet her halfway.

  He was quiet as if absorbing her words, weighing her intent, measuring her sincerity. Then he looked at her, his blue eyes flecked with green in the sun, the healthy scruff on his jaw leaning toward beard, not stubble. His lips tilted more up than down. “You mean that, don’t you? That if I never told you what happened to my leg, you would be fine with it.”

  “It’s your leg.”

  “Or not,” they said over each other.

  He chuckled and shook his head as if he was shaking off the funk. “Fair enough.”

  She held out her hand for him to shake. “Hi, I’m Sidney Teller, my parents are complete assholes, but I hope you won’t hold that against me.”

  He reached across and clasped her hand. “Bryan Wilcox. I drink, sometimes too much, sometimes not enough, but I try not to be a complete asshole when I do. Not sure I always succeed.”

  The world seemed brighter after shining the halogen on her skeleton. After owning her troubles. She hoped he felt the same.

  He didn’t hold her hand any longer than the second or two required to give it a couple of pumps. She liked that his grip was firm, maybe a little firmer than necessary.

  She squeezed back. Training horses and toting seventy-pound hay bales gave her a nasty grip.

  He looked her up and down, not in a creeper sort of way, but as if he might have seen the real Sidney for the first time without all the prejudiced, parental bullshit.

  “Bryan Wilcox.” She rolled his name around on her tongue and liked the way it felt there. “So how did you get the name Boomer?”

  When he smiled, it was big and genuine and mischievous as hell. “’Cause I used to like to blow shit up.”

  Popping the door latch, he stepped out of the truck and she followed after him. She climbed on the bumper and reached into the back of the tail bed and palmed the flask, sliding it into the back pocket of her jeans.

  She reached the front of the office first, pulled the door open. She turned back. Bryan straggled behind. Not because his leg slowed him down. In fact, his limp was so slight, she probably wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking.

  He was lost in his own little world, a dreaminess in his eyes. Eyes that were firmly planted on her ass.

  “You staring at the flask or my ass?”

  He stepped in close, blocking out the sun. Her pulse thumped up a notch. “If we’re being honest with one another, I’m gonna say both. That a problem?” He tipped his Stetson with a cocky grin and stepped inside.

  “The honesty or the staring at my ass?”

  “Either.”

  “No.” She had the pleasure of watching his eyes widen when he turned, liking that she’d surprised him. Liking that she’d unbalanced him. Liking that he liked looking at her ass.

  She couldn’t fault him for looking. She looked all the time. Appreciation for the human form shouldn’t be reserved for stuffy museums or the glossy pages of a coffee table book. Life was too short for that.

  Two hours later, from the observation road outside one of the corrals, she lowered the binoculars and gave Bryan the neck number of the last horse she’d picked out. Four horses total. All geldings. Two sorrels—one with white stockings, one without—a bay, and a buckskin—because she had a thing for buckskins.

  Though even the buckskin kept with the Lazy S’s requirements. Stout, to carry the winter hunters. Bold, so they would be steady on the trail. Quality confirmation, to withstand the rigors of packing supplies or riders through the mountains day in and day out. And a soft eye, meaning a horse that was calm and mellow.

  Bryan stuffed the pen into the chest pocket of his jacket. As they walked back to give their selections to the adoption coordinator, a stiff breeze blew off the plains and lifted the Stetson from his head.

  He fumbled with his hat as it hit the top of the six-foot-high corral, but he was a half step behind and the hat tumbled into the pen. He bent down to grab it, but it was out of reach on a fresh pile of manure.

  “Oh, shit,” she giggled. “That’s not good.”

  He harrumphed, but it lacked heat. “I’ll see if I can get one of the wranglers—”

  She lost the rest of his sentence because a wild burro trotted up to the hat, braying and hee-hawing, not caring at all that they stood a few feet away.

  Bryan made a loud, distracting noise, waving his arms in the way you do to try to scram hundreds of pounds of animal away from you. The burro didn’t scram. As he stepped to the fence he stepped on the brim of the hat, grinding it into the manure and dirt. He brayed at them again, his hot donkey breath wafting over them.

  He seriously needed one of Bryan’s mints.

  Bryan tried to shoo him again, but the animal stared at him with his big brown eyes. The burro blinked, long and slow, sniffed them from a foot away, then blew little blobs of donkey snot over them.

  “Nice,” Sidney deadpanned as she scrubbed her face with the tail of her shirt. “Really swell.”

  Then the donkey returned to the hat and lipped the crown a few times. When the wind tried to take it away, he stomped a slim hoof on the brim then bit a standing edge, raised the mangled hat in the air, and shook it, the hat whacking him on his long nose over and over again. A couple of the other donkeys looked over, but most pointedly ignored the shenanigans as if they refused to see the silly.

  She glanced over at Bryan, a hilarious combination of horror and acquiescence registering on his face. Where was a camera when she needed one?

  “Sonofabitch,” he grumbled.

  Then, with one last head toss, the burro’s teeth slipped and the hat flew up, up, up. Bryan leaped up onto the cross rails of the corral, leaned out into the pen, and snagged the hat in the air. The burro spun and Bryan struggled to stay balanced, his upper body tipped over the top rail into the pen. Sidney grabbed him by the belt and yanked him back over the fence.

  His momentum drove them into the ground. They landed in a heap of arms and legs and torsos. She elbowed him in the gut, trying to get up.

  “Ommph.” Bryan struggled to sit up.

  “My bad.”

  The donkey hit the fence. The metal clanked as the animal pawed at the lower rail and brayed its frustration. Bryan beat his hat on his leg, dislodging some of the dust and debris, reshaped the crown as best he could, and plopped it firmly back on his head.

  The burro stared down at them. It looked over its shoulder at its buddies, then looked back and gave them a self-satisfied blink.

  To the donkey, Bryan said, “You’re such an ass.”

  * * * *

  Boomer was one paddock over from the ass that stomped his hat. The damn hat was practically brand new. Now one corner of the brim dipped down, obscuring some of his peripheral vision.

  The wranglers would cut Sidney’s selections from the different paddocks and herd them into a single corral so they could run them down the chute and into the back of their stock trailer.

  While Sidney was inside finishing the adoption paperwork, his mood deteriorated. His stomach grumbled, but his sour mood was about more than hunger. All the standing and the waiting around was harder on his leg than running, riding, or even climbing up and down the construction ladders. The end of his stump ached and his sweaty skin itched inside the socket. He was ready to be back at the ranch, ready to pull his leg off, put his foot up, and, yes, have a freaking beer or two.

  Things could be worse, so he couldn’t complain too much. He could be back on the streets of Iraq, with a hun
dred pounds of gear, an M16 strapped to his chest, and a bull’s-eye painted on his back.

  Yeah, it could be a helluva lot worse.

  “Gate!” one of the wranglers yelled to him.

  He pulled the gate lever on the chute and the wrangler drove the horses up into the trailer, their hooves tapping out a nervous staccato on the floorboards. They whinnied, calling out to their herd mates left behind.

  He tried to ignore it, but he couldn’t ignore the fear in their high-pitched cries. It grated on his nerves, tightened his chest for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.

  Reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket, his hand came up empty. No flask. He cursed and pounded his fist into the back of the trailer.

  “Problem?” Sidney asked.

  He turned and scowled, unsure if he was angry at her for taking his booze or angry at her for sneaking up behind him. For the second time today. Being back in the states had made him soft.

  “No.” He slid the trailer door closed and released the lever on the chute. “Everything is freaking dandy.” He didn’t raise his voice, but even to his ears it was colder than the breeze blowing off the plains.

  She looked up at him and blinked like the donkey had. “Fantastic, then there’s no reason for you to be an asshole.”

  Right. He closed his eyes and counted backwards from three. He didn’t have the patience to start at ten. When he opened them again, she stared up at him with concern. At least he hoped it was concern. If it was pity, that would just piss him off again.

  “Better?”

  He shrugged one shoulder, but since they were being honest, he added. “Not really. But I can deal.”

  She nodded once and then said, “We set?”

  He wanted to get down on his knees, kiss her tiny, booted toes, and thank her for changing the subject. “Yep.”

  The trailer shuddered as the horses pushed and shoved. The bay bit the buckskin on the rump, but they were packed in tight enough the horse couldn’t kick back.

  The horses from the other paddocks called out, not as frantic, not as frequent. The horses in the trailer whinnied, but the cries grew quieter as they settled in.